Recent searches
Search options
Administered by:
I'm seeing many people ask questions like "where are the people who are supposed to stop this?" and "what can *I* do about this?" I believe this sentiment is a symptom of the way our institutions are structured to deny us the lived experience of direct action.
The structures of liberal and capitalist institutions have so deeply taken over that most people in the US never even interact with a directly democratic institution, let alone become accustomed to making decisions that way.
I think there's a psychological consequence to never making decisions together in an assembly. We only ever experience taking and giving orders, buying products, and casting votes. We never learn the skills needed to act for ourselves, together. We never feel what it's like to build power together. We don't even know how to begin because we don't have an institutional toe-hold in our neighborhoods or workplaces. Our institutions have left us atomized and disempowered and we feel that helplessness in times like this.
Here are some corollary thoughts in no particular order:
1) This is an inherent problem with the revolutionary potential of political parties and labor unions. To the extent that they concentrate decision-making within the organization, they engender this sense of passivity. There are other problems, of course, but I really want to focus here on the experience. If your rank-and-file members are just doing what the party or union tells them to do, they're just learning how to follow orders and not developing their potential as human beings.
2) A quote by James C. Scott on "anarchist calisthenics" which I will let speak for itself: "One day you will be called on to break a big law in the name of justice and rationality. Everything will depend on it. You have to be ready. How are you going to prepare for that day when it really matters? You have to stay ‘in shape’ so that when the big day comes you will be ready. What you need is anarchist calisthenics. Every day or so break some trivial law that makes no sense, even if it’s only jaywalking. Use your own head to judge whether a law is just or reasonable. That way, you’ll keep trim—and when the big day comes, you’ll be ready.”
3) Much of how we understand reality is structured by metaphor and metaphor begins in experience (insert Lakoff & Johnson here). If our experience is limited to liberal, capitalist relations, then so will our metaphors be (insert Bookchin here). My hunch is that this is where phrases like "social capital" come from and why they bother me. I've heard permaculture people describe the growth of trees as the tree reinvesting the profits of photosynthesis to expand production for next season. Systems theory people describe ecosystems in terms of corporate structure, with hierarchies and division of labor. "Natural capital," "ecosystem services," the list goes on. Developing an ecological sensibility requires developing ecological *human to human social relations* and, with that, new metaphors.
4) This whole thread is really just a half-baked argument for prefiguration. So, three cheers for Malatesta, I guess.
@mikecarley
Yes, we must remember: there can be no autocrat if enough workers and consumers stop and say, "If and only if the genocides and fascist regimes end will I use or care about making money" for example. It is a risk! But so is obedience.
Labor unions AND labor law began with people deciding to coordinate and in many cases halt our economic activity to insist on fairer conditions and protections, especially for the poor and marginalized. The people coordinating preceded and created the laws.